


Unparalleled

by VeloxVoid



Category: Fire Emblem Heroes, Fire Emblem Series, Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: Brigid - Freeform, Childhood Trauma, Culture Shock, Domestic Fluff, F/F, Falling In Love, Fluff, Fodlan, Friends to Lovers, Gay Dorothea Arnault, Gay Petra Macneary, Romantic Friendship, Walking through nature
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-30
Updated: 2020-06-30
Packaged: 2021-03-04 23:00:13
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,424
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25004281
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/VeloxVoid/pseuds/VeloxVoid
Summary: The newlywed Petra and Dorothea leave on an adventure across Fódlan, stumbling across long-forgotten memories. They share a moment of peace and beauty, and Petra recalls her childhood in Brigid.
Relationships: Doropetra - Relationship, Dorothea Arnault & Petra Macneary, Dorothea Arnault/Petra Macneary, Petrathea - Relationship
Comments: 11
Kudos: 39





	Unparalleled

Fódlan would never be as beautiful as Brigid.

It was a sentiment Petra had always held. She had realised it upon her first time in the country, fixating on her surroundings - the nature and buildings and fashion all around her - to drown out the more unsavoury emotions that had plagued her during that time of her life.

Yes, when she had first visited Fódlan, with her face tear-streaked and mind reeling with confusion, fear, and distrust, Petra had decided to focus upon the views. The people babbled in an ugly language, one hitched with a snooty accent and unsavoury guttural sounds, and thus, she had shut them out. She’d shut out the royals looking down at her through their hollow, condemning eyes, and the pitiful servants desperate to make her look ‘acceptable’ for their overlords.

Instead, Petra had looked at their clothes. Their garb had always looked choking, made from thick fibres with stuffy collars and puffy sleeves and long skirts down to their ankles. At the time, she had thought they’d looked simply stupid - yet as time had gone on, she had realised that their clothes being so thick served for an actual purpose.

Fódlan was cold.

The atmosphere was bitter, and biting, and so crisp that stepping outside always felt like a slap in the face from a cold, clawed hand.  _ People should never have settled in a country so bitter-cold, _ Petra had thought one day as she had shivered profusely during one of Adrestia’s many winter ceremonies.  _ Are they  _ trying _ to die? _

So, she supposed, having stupidly-warm clothing was one thing Fódlan had done right.

Petra felt that same bitter air upon her skin now. The wind cut through her clothes as violently as a bloodthirsty Faerghan soldier, desperate to shred through her armour to get to the meat and bones beneath. Fódlan winds had always been so brutal: even in summer, the breeze was as sharp as steel and just as cold.

“Oh, are you chilly?” The voice that met Petra’s ears, however, was like the warmth of a fire in the dead of winter; it seemed to melt the cold winds just as it had melted the icy barriers she’d built around her heart those many years ago. “We’re almost there,” Dorothea said, “then we can have our picnic. Hopefully that’ll warm you up.”

Hearing Dorothea speak the language of Brigid would never not come as a shock, but it was a welcome one.

“You are not having to speak Brigidian to me,” Petra had insisted a couple of years back with a blush to her cheeks.

“I want to,” Dorothea had replied in Petra’s mother tongue, “from you.”

“... You mean  _ for _ me…?” Petra had giggled back.

“Yes!” Dorothea had laughed. “Oh, hush! You know I’m not good yet!”

Now, Petra answered her fiancée in Brigidian too, knowing it pleased Dorothea to hear her speak her native tongue. “I hope so too, my love.”

Another thing Fódlan had done right, she noted, regarded their nature. The country landscapes were so vastly different from Brigid’s that she didn’t think she could compare the two.

Brigid was beautiful in its own right: Petra had grown up in a port city, where the water lapping at the bays and beaches shimmered a glistening sapphire colour, reflecting the boundless azure beauty of the sky above. The boats that sat atop it were all painted with care, each shade symbolising their trade: dark, crimson reds meant they carried dried, seasoned meat, whereas the bright scarlet of a rouge lipstick meant fresh meat was on board. Green symbolised vegetables, white indicated salt, and blue was often bright and gaudy to display the fabrics and fashion within. Gold meant the ships belonged to the bankers, whose lives revolved around the monetary trade. On rare occasions, Petra had even seen boats splashed with silver paint that reflected the sunlight like delicate slivers of glass, and had been told by her mother that the fat-bellied cogs carried jewelry for the country’s nobles.

Brigid’s buildings were often painted similarly. Admittedly, the hue of the abode did not symbolise trade, but merely showed what colour its tenants favoured best. Visiting the residential area of Brigid’s capital, Petra had been fascinated as a youth by a building painted pink. It was the delicate shade of a young woman’s blush, shy and understated amidst its bold vermillion and emerald neighbours.

She had always wanted to paint her future house pink. Not quite the colour of that little house she’d seen, but perhaps something brighter - a little purple - to match her tattoos.

Alas, Fódlan was grey. If its buildings were not the dull, dusty colour of slate, they were the brown of packed earth. Some dared to show a timid peek of red amidst the browns, but even then it would be a sort of muted coral colour, scarcely standing out amidst the ashen sea.

What it lacked in colourful buildings, though, Petra supposed it made up for in nature. Upon her first visit, Petra had been dismayed at the amount of rain, and that feeling had never truly left. Back in Brigid, rain was exciting: it was rare, and fleeting, and made the air heavy like the hot breath of a predator breathing down her neck, exhilarating her and her childhood friends: making them antsy with itching skin, wanting to frolic. Rain in Fódlan, however, was constant. It came down in a thick sheet and did not relent for hours - sometimes days - forcing humans and animals alike into hiding as it went about its ice-cold path of destruction.

Yet, those same rains made nature  _ bloom. _ Grass in Brigid was rarely green - beneath the sun’s inexorable stare, the grass has become fried and brown, creating rolling fields of yellow and beige to rival the fur of plump golden retrieving-dogs. Any vegetables that grew in such grasses were tough and tasteless, but her country’s imports made up for that. In Fódlan, though, the grasses were  _ alive. _ Their hue was fierce - violently green - and sported wildflowers as though trying to match the blades of grass in number. Petals of white and yellow and orange made the fields of Fódlan look like beautiful patchwork blankets, their patterns unpredictable and bright, but gorgeous nonetheless.

The trees that lined such fields were magnificent too. Today, beneath the Harpstring Moon sun, the trees were the delicate chartreuse of mid-spring, but some reminded Petra of home. Cherry blossom bloomed in these times, and brought splashes of delicate blush to the forests she had ventured past, looking identical to that little pink house from her childhood.

Yes, what Fódlan did not have in its cities, it made up for in the countryside.

Petra and Dorothea Macneary-Arnault had ventured through this countryside for hours now. On their honeymoon-journey across Fódlan, Dorothea had taken a diversion, and had made plans for the day that she wouldn’t reveal to Petra.

“We’ll make a picnic, and eat it somewhere special,” she had merely said, packing a wicker basket with bread and cheese and fruit.

“Special…?” Petra’s brow had furrowed whilst passing her love a pile of sweet buns she’d made at the previous night’s camp. “We’re in the middle of nowhere.”

“Trust me. I think you’ll find it…” But Dorothea had forgotten the word in Brigidian. Her last word, she spoke in Fódlanese: “... nostalgic.”

Petra’s daydreaming was interrupted. Just as a tree became visible over the top of the hill they were climbing, Dorothea’s horse gave a snort of protest and stopped in its tracks. The gorgeous palfrey, with its dappled grey coat shining beneath the midday light, shook its head and pawed at the ground.

“C’mon Mittelfrank,” Dorothea stroked her horse’s neck with delicate hands, “we’re almost at the top!”

The journey had been long, though, and the final stretch to their destination had been a slow, steep incline. Dorothea had become excited as they’d begun to climb the hill: “There! That’s where we’ll stop!” she’d exclaimed.

Now, she slid from Mittelfrank’s back and landed in the grass, some blades of which reached up to her knees. She patted the horse on the backside and chuckled at him. “You really couldn’t have made those last few steps? You lazy thing.”

Mittelfrank whickered in response.

Petra faced her wife, and could not resist smiling. Springs in Fódlan were not warm, but Dorothea chose to wear the traditional garb of Brigid even so. She wore high riding boots that laced at the top, and skin-tight riding shorts that came down to her mid-thighs. A short-sleeved shirt, the same brown colour as the shorts, bared her arms and midriff. Dorothea must have been freezing, but she wore one of Petra’s magenta shawls across her shoulders to warm her.

The outfit was plain - understated - but Dorothea never failed to look astounding no matter her garb. Petra had braided her wife’s chestnut hair in a simple fishtail that fell across her shoulder; styling one another’s hair had become a daily ritual. Dorothea’s choice today had been to tie a bun upon each side of Petra’s head, in the style she’d lovingly named “the Bear Cub”.

“Are you done staring? Can we reach the top now?” Dorothea placed her hands upon her hips.

Petra giggled, and swung a leg across her own horse’s back, sliding down to join Dorothea on the ground. “Forgive me for getting lost in your eyes,” she said as she did. “They match the colour of the grass so perfectly.”

“You’re so corny!” Dorothea told her. She took ahold of Mittelfrank’s reins, and began to walk.

Petra followed suit, taking Dagda - her own champagne palfrey - by the reins and joining Dorothea’s side. Her calves burned with each long, arduous step. “I haven’t needed to use this much energy in a long time,” she said, a little out of breath.

“I know!” Dorothea replied. “I don’t miss those days. Now, instead of fighting in some dumb war, we get to do stuff like this…”

As she spoke, the two reached the crest, and the view beyond showed itself. Petra took a breath, the chilly spring air scratching at her throat, and let out a noise of disbelief.

She had not seen anything so beautiful in a long time. More of those typical Fódlan fields stretched below them unbounded, seeming to go on for miles upon miles with no sign of stopping; the bursts of wildflowers splashing across the grass gave the green an air of chaos, littered with oranges and whites and purples.

Only one thing broke up the landscape: an almost synthetic structure erupting from the field as sudden and unwelcome as a lance through the ribs. A building sat nestled in the valley below them, with sand-coloured bricks that looked cast from gold beneath the amber sunlight. It was built so impeccably - its towering spires and decorative brickwork truly a feat of architecture - that Petra could almost forgive it for being an ugly Fódlan structure, disturbing the beauty of the wilderness. For a moment, she thought she’d laid eyes upon a castle - a long-forgotten fortress buried deep in Fódlan’s core, until she realised.

Each window was made from multicoloured glass, glimmering beneath the sun like hundreds of tiny rainbows. Stained glass.

Petra was not looking upon a castle. She was looking upon Garreg Mach.

“We met there, my love,” Dorothea said, her voice airy. She sounded almost wistful, and a slight sadness glazed her eyes as she looked upon the monastery. “It’ll be in ruins, soon.”

Petra blinked down at it. One would never be able to tell from its exterior - it still looked as pristine as the day Petra had first laid eyes upon it, those many years ago - but it was empty. With the Church destroyed and the Academy disbanded, the monastery had no use anymore. Petra had heard rumours that the new Emperor was looking to repurpose it, but no such plans had come to fruition.

Garreg Mach, the magnificent building with so much history embedded in its walls, with so many memories haunting its now-empty corridors like lost souls never to be put to rest, and with so much blood imprinted upon its dusty stone floors from battles long past… It seemed almost a shame to let it go to waste.

Petra and Dorothea had met in its dining hall after settling in on their first Academy day. Petra had thought Dorothea was merely a polite young woman back then, pretty and talented, but the trials of war had made her realise a whole other side to the singer.

The memories of Dorothea from within Garreg Mach were not ones of falling in love, or of fleeting kisses and tender conversations - they were merely memories of a friend. A classmate, teammate, and friend Dorothea had been back then, but nothing more.

Still, she would not trade those memories for the world. Without forming that solid, unyielding friendship first, Petra could never have paved the path to adoration which she now stood so firmly upon. Within those golden-bricked walls, Dorothea had sung Petra to sleep after a nightmare, and Petra had taught Dorothea how to weave fishtail braids in her hair. Dorothea had helped Petra to understand Fódlanese grammar better, and Petra had taught Dorothea some basic Brigidian phrases.

“We were so young,” Petra said, just as wistful.

“So innocent,” Dorothea agreed. “We had no idea what was coming.”

“I’m almost glad we went through what we did, though,” Petra said. Hidden beneath her words were the unspeakable things: _war, bloodshed, loss, death._ _Hubert, gone. Bernadetta, gone. Claude and Dimitri sacrificed to Sothis, their blood fertilising Adrestian soil._ Perhaps it was evil of her, to suggest she was glad for experiencing such things. “They led me on the path to loving you…” she muttered.

Dorothea’s eyes, the emeralds mottled with flecks of hazelnut and saffron, swam with adoration as she beheld her wife. “This country is a better place now. And we… are better together.”

She slipped her hand into Petra’s own, their lithe fingers interlacing, and they looked out over Garreg Mach, bathed in midday sun. The view was unparalleled, its beauty astounding, but it did not even come close to matching the love Petra felt for Dorothea. She knelt into the grass, Dorothea joining her, and the two women felt each other’s presence, as resolute and enduring as the monastery they looked down upon.

No, Fódlan would never be quite as beautiful as Brigid. But, Petra had met the love of her life here. Perhaps that made it beautiful enough.

**Author's Note:**

> Purely self-indulgent. Don't really know why I wrote it. Hope you liked it either way.
> 
> If you want more of my ramblings, my Twitter is @VeloxVoid.


End file.
